Who are these new (and old) F2 people?

Yes, this is an F2 2024 season preview split by how confusing I find the team names. No you don’t have to read it, I have made a flowchart instead.

Teams with confusing names I’m not used to

Rodin Motorsport

• Zane Maloney used to be one of the thousand Red Bull junior drivers but surprisingly that didn’t work out and he is now a lonely Sauber Academy member. Extra points for anyone who can keep up with the number of times he gets called “the boy from Barbados” by any F2 media this year. Luckily for us he was fastest in days two and three of testing so we get our first sighting in F2’s own report.

• Ritomo Miyata is the 2023 Super Formula champion and Toyota’s WEC reserve driver. He is therefore automatically my favourite F2 driver this year. Go Miyata!

Invicta Racing

• Kush Maini is back and definitely seems to have more luck than his brother because now he’s an Alpine junior driver.

• Gabriel Bortoleto won the F3 championship last year and is a member of the McLaren Driver Development Programme. His F3 season showed us that he doesn’t really need to take time to adapt to a new series before crushing the competition, so this should be fun!

Teams whose names have confusing new bits

DAMS Lucas Oil

• Jak Crawford is another to be ousted from the Red Bull junior programme but now finds himself with Aston Martin. He remains in waiting for being the most Americanest on the F1 grid.

• Everyone loves Juan Manuel Correa so what more is there to say?

PHM AIX Racing

• Joshua Dürksen is a new person!! Where did he come from!? (Paraguay or FRECA depending on how you interpreted that question).

• Taylor Barnard is stepping up from F3 and everyone is just hoping he will get to keep the initials TBA on the timing screens because it’s funny.

Teams who make life easy by keeping the same name

ART Grand Prix

• Yet again Victor Martins‘ website doesn’t disappoint. This year he has “forged a mind of steel” while climbing “the mountain of motorsport”. Seriously, I could only dream of writing like this. Oh and he’s also an Alpine junior driver.

• Zak O’Sullivan did F3 last year and came second. He is also a Williams’ Academy member, which I’ll bet was due to the stellar reference he got from ex-F1 driver Mark Blundell (or just some other random man named Mark Blundell) who says “Zak has a firm understanding of what it takes to reach the top”. Top words.

Prema

• Oliver Bearman came sixth in F2 last year, but it doesn’t matter really because he is hyped (I mean why not? He’s pretty good) and a Ferrari Driver Academy member.

• Kimi Antonelli is MEGA-hyped though. He didn’t even do F3 but here he is anyway. Mercedes will be hoping he lives up to it all because he’s a part of their sparse driver academy.

MP Motorsport

• I think my previous preview post for Dennis Hauger still stands. He was at least fastest on day one of pre-season testing in Bahrain, with the caveat that it was pretty wet. Yes you heard me, it was raining in Bahrain.

• Franco Colapinto is a Williams junior driver, meaning we can watch him and Zak fight it out over who gets the next Williams F1 seat when Alex Albon gets poached by Mercedes…

Van Amersfoort Racing

• Last year Enzo Fittipaldi was new to the Red Bull junior team and this year he is new to no longer being a member of the Red Bull junior team. At least he’s in good company. Luckily for him though, he still has his credentials as the grandson of F1-great Emerson Fittipaldi to fall back on.

• Rafael Villagómez has plagued hung out in F3 for long enough and now, following an all-time-high result of 25th place in the standings after only three attempts, he has enough money for an F2 seat.

Hitech

• Amaury Cordeel is still here. He also seems to have forgotten to update his website for a few years, but I don’t really blame him.

• Paul Aron used to be a mega-hyped Mercedes junior member but now we have Kimi Antonelli, so sorry Paul.

Campos Racing

• I still refuse to read more about Isack Hadjar but he has at least managed to have avoided Red Bull’s cull of junior drivers. Impressive stuff.

• Pepe Martí came fifth in F3 last year, which was apparently enough to keep him on the Red Bull junior books, but then again he is apparently managed by Fernando Alonso’s management company and who would want to mess with Alonso?

Trident

• Richard Verschoor is embarking on his fourth year of F2 and at this point I’m running out of things to say about him, so just go buy a bucket hat instead.

• Roman Staněk doesn’t seem to have been keeping his website up to date so I have no pointless information about him to impart and I’ve run out of other stuff so maybe just read last year’s preview instead.